When I ran OS 9, I used to save files from the net directly to the zip disk in the zip drive that came with my G4.

On OS 9 the zip disk showed up on the desktop when I inserted it into the drive and one could select it as the target folder to save to.

On OS 10.2.8 that doesn't seem to work. The zip disk still shows up on the desktop but when I go to either 'save as' or to 'download' in the browser and select desktop, the zip disk does not show up as a desktop item. All the other desktop files and folders do, but zip doesn't.
So now I save or download to the desktop and then copy across to the zip disk - works but is not as user friendly as OS 9.
Am I missing something here? Any way I can save to the zip disk directly?

I think you have to make sure that you are looking at the system desktop rather than your user desktop.

First, in your save dialog, make sure that the blue button all the way to the right of the Where: location is pointing up and that you can see all the hierarchies of folders and stuff. Next move your level bar all the way to the left so that you are looking at the system level desktop.

I think you have to make sure that you are looking at the system desktop rather than your user desktop.
Next move your level bar all the way to the left so that you are looking at the system level desktop.
This is different that the desktop that each login user has.

Thanks - that was exactly my problem.
I didn't realize there was a system level desktop on OS X.....what you see on the screen is sort of a combination of system and user desktop - there is only one user on this Mac. And the 'save page as' dialog box always came up with the level bar all the way to the right.
But sure enough, when I moved it all the way to the left, my two harddrives, the network and the zip drive showed up. Tried saving a file directly to the zip - worked like a charm.
Thank you very much for your feedback.